Another day, another headache for tyrant Vladimir Putin as Ukraine turns its relentless bombardment toward Russia’s largest internet retailer.
Tatyana Kim, 50, founder of online distributor Wildberries and Russia’s wealthiest woman, said Ukrainian drones struck the retailer’s warehouses in two southwestern cities overnight. Footage circulating online shows large fires at both locations, with more than a dozen people thought to have been injured.
“There are no words to describe all the feelings and emotions caused by the attacks on ordinary people, on our employees, on us, who are simply doing are jobs,” Kim wrote on the social media platform Telegram, which is popular across the former Soviet Union. “But these situations demonstrate the most important thing: We must continue to do what we do for the benefit of people.”
It is the second time Ukrainian strikes have targeted Wildberries’ logistic hubs in the past four days, according to the BBC, with eight people killed in attacks over the weekend.
Wildberries processes almost a million orders a day and has been described as a Russian analog to U.S. e-commerce behemoth Amazon.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky further confirmed the strikes in a Wednesday post on X, asserting the sites had been involved in supplying Russian forces in Ukraine with vital equipment. “We are, quite justly, bringing the war back home—to Russia,” he wrote. “Peace is needed, and Ukraine has presented the Russian side with every proposal. They must be forced to turn to diplomacy.”
The mounting attacks against Russia’s biggest online retailer only deepen the crises Putin, 73, is now facing on multiple fronts. Gains in the war he started with Ukraine four years ago have now stalled, as even fervent supporters of the campaign at home express increasing frustration with how the campaign is being managed.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has continued with a barrage of attacks against critical Russian oil infrastructure, knocking huge portions of refining capacity offline and creating desperate shortages across the country. The Kremlin has implemented rationing across more than half of Russia’s 83 regions, with widespread reports of panic buying and lines of up to 38 hours at the pump.
Those shortages come against a further backdrop of economic turmoil. Russia’s own economy ministry has cut its GDP growth forecast for the year to around 0.4 percent as Putin’s war runs as much as $30 billion over budget. Household bankruptcies are up almost 10 percent, with some banks reporting that up to 15 percent of consumers are now failing to repay their loans.
Even Kremlin-linked pollsters have recorded Putin’s overall approval rating dropping sharply by around five points this month, representing the sharpest weekly fall since Moscow implemented a nationwide mobilization of recruits in the fall of 2022. Russian bloggers have suggested that the discontent is rife across the country’s elite, with powerful business leaders privately expressing their disappointment in the president.
